Chattanooga Pulse

The plane, like most planes, had an uncomfortably narrow aisle and low ceiling and I was reminded of this in every awkward bump as I trundled down the aisle to find my seat.  And the service, like most US Airways service, wasn’t worth the crap on the toilet paper in its incredibly narrow bathrooms, but that didn’t matter.  Even if it wasn’t too narrow to stand in any other way than sideways, most people were too scared or too pissed off to produce a bowel movement anyway.

In my experience at least, I found that the only good thing about the accursed airline was the sense of camaraderie it imposed upon the passengers, who for just a little while set aside all cultural, racial, ethnic and sexual boundaries to verbally rally among themselves against their common enemy:  The Corporate Degenerates operating US Airways like a Thailand teen-slavery ring and the bi-polar stewardesses who treated their passengers as if they were all simultaneously defendants in a divorce court.  Sure, they had “Captain Sully”…but he wasn’t the one tending to the passengers.  With him tucked away in the cockpit, US Airways flights were like sharing the inside of a Pringles tube with Hillary Clinton.

That didn’t matter to me these days, though.  As soon as I found my seat and dealt with the age-old question of “crotch or ass” when I had to squeeze past the occupied aisle seat to get to my window (he got “ass”, by the way), I had been sitting for less than five minutes when I nodded off as people were still boarding, and didn’t wake up until the plane abruptly jarred in landing two hours and one time zone later.  Beautiful.

There are two benefits to being a third-shift patrolman:  The more obvious is a charming personality, but a lesser-known one is the ability to sleep anywhere, at any time, in any position.  It’s kind of like a forced narcolepsy, and you won’t hear about it at any recruiting seminars.

I have slept sitting bolt upright in a Crown Victoria (1989 through 2005 models) with a seatbelt shoulder strap wrapped around my forehead to keep me from falling forward onto the steering wheel.  I have slept in closets on a pile of clothes to avoid daylight, air mattresses in basements, and even a few times after hours in a clamshell-style tanning bed with a coat for a pillow.  (This might not sound too interesting, but bear in mind they are solid plastic and very, very cold echo chambers when not in use.  Anyone here ever get the first use of a tanning bed for the day and feel the thrill of cold plastic on your person as the lights fire up?  Well, when the lights are off, it just stays that way.)

I’ve slept on the bench seat of a friend’s restaurant after hours, waiting room couches, and under the glare of fluorescent lights in an underground parking garage.  I’ve been lulled to sleep by the cool winds off of Lake Chickamauga as I slept on a boat ramp, and even once behind the wheel of a Ford F150.  (Not for long, mind you.)

I’ve slept next to a 1:1 scale mock-up of a nuclear reactor, and at the top of parking garages overlooking our downtown area.  At the end of abandoned and shuttered project development cul-de-sacs, and in favorite spots in more than one cemetery.  I’ve slept at dinner tables (much to the consternation of family members) and in gymnasiums (much to the consternation of gym members), and once at the base of a monument at the center of Point Park.  I’m a regular narcoleptic Johnny Cash, folks:  “I’ve Slept Everywhere, Man”, and not to worry:  I slept in nearly all those places with a pistol in my hand.

The plane trip was for business of course; US Airways is atrocious, but they’re low-bid.  I had been told I was being sent to a Department of Justice conference, but I wasn’t certain until the last second I wasn’t walking into an often-threatened and elaborate intervention setting, and I was pleasantly relieved to find only strangers with badges instead of family with baggage.

I eased into a chair nearest a window.  I popped a mint in my mouth and settled in nicely between PowerPoint presentations on the cost-savings of powered parachutes for searches and surveillance, and uses for logic-based predictive analysis algorithms.

And in the end?

Albeit ever-so-briefly…I slept there, too.

When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he is an occasional student at UTC, an up and coming carpenter, auto mechanic, prominent boating enthusiast, and spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.